A Christmas Story
by Kylie Anderson
Summary: A CSI has to write a story based on a previous Christmas. This CSI is faced with the past and her dysfunctional family. Oneshot.


A Christmas Story

I have my laptop. I'm supposed to write a Christmas story for my AP counselor. It's supposed to help me with my 'drinking' problem. I have to write it though if I want to work here. I begin to write.

----

A Christmas Story

Christmas was a time for cheer for most families. Some families fight all the time. Some families are broken and cannot be fixed. This is a Christmas story of one little girl.

In a house with Christmas lights and a beautiful tree with lots of ornaments and a star at the top, the house appeared happy. Indeed the house was as happy as could be, but not the people living inside of it.

A girl, who was no longer a girl, she was a teenager at age thirteen, sat quietly in her room. Salty tears ran down her pale face. Screams and shouts were heard in the background as the girl turned up her holiday CD to drown their angry voices. Her parents were fighting. Again.

This girl was a smart, smart girl. She excelled in everything she did. She was only thirteen, but she was doing college writing, reading and vocabulary. She was doing twelfth grade science and history. She was doing eleventh grade math. She always had her head in a book. Books were her life. Books were her way of escaping reality. Books brought her into another world and another time letting her mind grow.

The girl loved her father dearly. Her father was an amazing man. He understood her and encouraged her. She was daddy's little girl.

She was assigned a project one day. She had to do a poster on her family. She had no siblings, so the poster mostly consisted of her and her father. There were only two pictures of her mother. The girl wanted to cut her mother out of the picture for good, but she couldn't.

The reason was simple. Her mother smoked and drank all the time. The girl knew the effects of second hand smoking and side stream smoke. She could get cancer without ever lighting a cigarette, all it took was her mother lighting a smoke. Although the smoking bothered her, she didn't care about it as much as her mother's drinking. Her mother was an alcoholic. Her mother was in denial about being a drunk. Her mother had abused her many times. Her father tried to stop, but her mother wouldn't stop. The girl wanted a lock on her door, but there wasn't one.

So, on school nights, her mother would wake her up. She would say nonsensical things. Her mother would keep the girl up for hours and hours on end. When she went to school the next day, she was so tired. She may miss a few answers on a test that she would normally know, but because of her dysfunctional family, she would get B's and C's on tests.

The girl didn't want to be around her mother anymore. The girl simply wanted to be with her dad on an island where the world's troubles couldn't touch them.

The sound of breaking glass could not be drowned by the girl's music. The girl turned up her music. She opened up one of her favorite books. She knew her father was beating up her mother, but she wasn't sure how she felt about this. Her father was a good man when her mother wasn't drinking. The girl just thought that her father was defending himself. He couldn't be a bad man.

But he was. Her mother was a bad person too. Her family wasn't as normal as she wanted it to be. Her family was broken. The holidays never seemed so gloomy.

The girl noted it was Christmas Eve. She fell asleep hoping for Christmas to bring peace on earth.

In the middle of the night, the girl saw more bright lights. They blended in with sirens. She smelt copper in the air. Her mother was soaked in blood sobbing. The girl saw her father in the bedroom, but something was wrong. He wasn't moving. He was slashed with a knife. The girl saw her mother was holding a knife as she rocked back and forth. The girl saw a young man who was a police officer puking. She wanted to throw up, but instead she choked on her tears.

Someone pulled the girl away for that nightmare of her mother killing her father and brought her into another nightmare. The girl was put in many foster homes and group homes until she went to college.

Of course, the girl got a good job. She lived in a hypocritical happiness. Everything she did was fake. Nothing was really real. Everything changed on Christmas Eve.

Hardly anyone would believe, but that girl was me.

----

"Sara?" A voice called at the door.

I jerked my head up from my laptop. I shut the lid quickly. "Yeah?" I asked.

It was Nick. "Hey, it's Christmas Eve. Why don't you go home?" Nick asked gently.

How can I go home when I have no real home? I have a place to live, but it doesn't feel warm. I'm alone on Christmas. "I've just got to finish up something." I said.

"Why don't you spend time with your family? My parents have come up from Texas." Nick asked gently.

"I don't have any." I said quietly. "Do you have time for a Christmas story?"

Nick nodded and pulled up a chair. He sat quietly as I told him everything that happened. It was like he understood me.

When he left, I finished my story.

----

That was the best Christmas gift I had ever received. I just want someone to understand me. One of my coworkers did that. I thank him.

That's my Christmas story.

Sara Sidle

Las Vegas

**THE END **

Disclaimer: I do not own CSI

A/N- Have a Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Happy New Year! I hope you like this story, if you do, check out my other stories.

Kylie Anderson


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